That's a myth. Lisp has lots of syntax. It just works different from what one might expect. It even has user-level mechanism to implement custom syntax: Macros.
Lisp usually has a two-level syntax: s-expressions as a data-level syntax and on top of that Lisp program syntax: function calls, built-in special operators (block, catch, if, let, progn, tagbody, quote, function, ...) and macros (lots of macros).
The myth that Lisp has no syntax, comes mostly from computer science education where students learn a very simplified pure Lisp as an educational tool. Telling them Lisp has no syntax, then is the usual trick to get the students of the mental hurdle of a different - Lisp on top of s-expressions - syntax. This Lisp is then just enough to write recursive list processing functions - but has nothing to do with real programming in Lisp. Even slightly more advanced (with respect to Lisp usage) texts like SICP mostly don't use macros for syntactic extension and don't explain them.
That's a myth. Lisp has lots of syntax. It just works different from what one might expect. It even has user-level mechanism to implement custom syntax: Macros.
Lisp usually has a two-level syntax: s-expressions as a data-level syntax and on top of that Lisp program syntax: function calls, built-in special operators (block, catch, if, let, progn, tagbody, quote, function, ...) and macros (lots of macros).
The myth that Lisp has no syntax, comes mostly from computer science education where students learn a very simplified pure Lisp as an educational tool. Telling them Lisp has no syntax, then is the usual trick to get the students of the mental hurdle of a different - Lisp on top of s-expressions - syntax. This Lisp is then just enough to write recursive list processing functions - but has nothing to do with real programming in Lisp. Even slightly more advanced (with respect to Lisp usage) texts like SICP mostly don't use macros for syntactic extension and don't explain them.